Stacked Farm plays vertical farming long game, a new model for financing regen ag, biotech’s valley of death, Win-Win on alt-choc, Volare’s new BSF plant, BioClé’s delivery tech, Amatera’s breeding breakthrough

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This week: Australia’s Stacked Farm will expand its vertical farming business to the US, bringing what it claims is “a tech platform and operating model that has already been proven at commercial scale.”

Elsewhere, Argentina-based startup BioClé tackles a key challenge in nutraceuticals with a novel delivery system designed to protect bioactives from degradation in the digestive tract and deliver them to their target cells.

Plus:

Biotech's valley of death: Can iPROOF help firms cross it?
Regen ag: Soil Capital's new model for financing it
Aquaculture: Why isn’t there more investment?
Insect ag: Volare opens 5,000t protein factory
Choc’s away? Win-Win has an alternative..
Climate-smart crops: Amatera tackles plant breeding bottle neck
COP 31: What to expect

And finally… thanks to a wave of wearables and home testing kits, we’re now swimming in health data, says Aryeh Ganz at Cornucopian Capital. But meaningful insights? Not so much, he says…

Have a great week! Louisa, Jenn, and Elaine

And a big thanks to this week's headline sponsor:

Stacked Farm outlines the long game for vertical farming ahead of US expansion

You've got to scale up in steps before you start to build these large-scale facilities," says founder Daniel Tzvetkoff. Jennifer Marston

Agrifood corporates find a new model for financing regenerative agriculture via Soil Capital partnership

We believe that a joint investment model is the most effective way to drive large-scale adoption of regenerative agriculture, says Roquette. Jennifer Marston

Primient’s iPROOF facility aims to bridge biotech’s valley of death

The iPROOF site in Decatur, IL, opens next May, and feature fermenters ranging from 1,500 to 10,000 liters alongside flexible DSP equipment. Elaine Watson

BioClé tackles bioactives’ bioavailability challenge with novel delivery tech

The tech utilizes tiny bacterial extracellular vesicles, which have a natural affinity for intestinal cells and can be loaded with bioactives. Elaine Watson

US aquaculture needs more than VC dollars to grow: report

Aquaculture investment firm Hatch Blue recommends more patient or risk-tolerant capital to help businesses and technologies reach milestones. Jennifer Marston

Finnish insect ag firm Volare opens 5,000-ton protein factory in Finland, explores 2nd plant

"When it comes to product quality, it’s about digestibility, palatability, and health benefits as well as price and availability," says the CEO. Elaine Watson

Enabling farm efficiency through data-driven insights

Every reported sustainability outcome traces back to the farms and fields that produced it. Doktar’s sustainability platform connects farmer onboarding, field data collection, validation, impact calculation, monitoring and reporting in one digital structure, linking sensor and satellite measurements to recorded field-level data. The platform draws on Doktar’s experience designing and implementing more than 27 agricultural sustainability programs in 14 countries across 250,000 hectares.

Read the full story of how a field record becomes a reported outcome.

🎥 Mark Golder: ‘Cacao-based chocolate will become increasingly premium, and for everything else, there’s Win-Win’

Win-Win CEO Mark Golder: "It's the volatility in the cocoa market that creates uncertainty and prevents firms from planning properly." Elaine Watson

🎥 Amatera tackles plant breeding bottleneck with high-throughput cell screening platform

Amatera combines cell culture high-throughput automation and machine learning to accelerate the development of new crop varieties. Elaine Watson

From climate finance to AI’s impact on smallholders, here’s what to expect at COP31

To support climate adaptation, we have to first invest in smallholder farmers. Jennifer Marston

AgriFood Signals: DoorDash to buy Instacart, Terradot lands $34m, Biosphere wins Pentagon contract

Plus: Oishii goes to Walmart. Jennifer Marston

Guest article: Health data is booming. Meaningful insights? Not so much

The growth of wearables means we're awash with data, but not necessarily great insight. By guest contributor Aryeh Ganz

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‘No acceptable offers’ for Liberation Bioindustries as firm seeks to plug $25m funding gap

Why is the firm struggling to raise funds? Elaine Watson

Recent agrifood cyberattacks are ‘a wakeup call’ for the industry as ransomware incidences increase

No agrifood business is immune, but all of them can take precautionary steps now to secure their operations, says Food and Ag-ISAC. Jennifer Marston

Layoffs at Carbon Robotics as firm “realigns costs due to broader economic conditions”

One former employee claimed the firm had “rapidly scaled headcount only to issue a sudden massive layoff months later, with some employees let go just weeks after starting.” Elaine Watson